Ten Ways to Boost Business Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a vital part of modern business. Getting the team together to puzzle through problems and discover solutions can mean you make huge leaps forward in a short period of time. Tapping people’s potential takes more than just luck, however. Read these ten tips to find out how you can make the most of your colleagues’ creativity and put together exciting brainstorming sessions.
By Coby Neill
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Jokes: Start off the brainstorming session with jokes to get people laughing.
Your goal is to get everyone ready to brainstorm. Laughter has a way of relaxing
people into the mood to generate ideas in abundance. - Facilitation: You need a good business brainstorming facilitator. This person may not be the best brainstormer around, but is excellent at pulling ideas out of people. This person should be enthusiastic and excited for the duration of the session.
- The atmosphere has to be right: You’ll need to be in a comfortable setting with no distractions, fears or wants. The perfect state of mind is one of relaxed alertness. That is why a meeting like this should be done after breakfast and before lunch.
- There is no bad idea, only better ones: If you want to get yourself and others to increase their brainstorming for your business, you have to be very open and accepting to all ideas. Never, ever, criticise – not even as a joke. Criticism chokes creativity.
- Trust your feelings: Say what’s on your mind and make sure there is someone writing it all down. It helps to have an artist who can capture concepts visually.
- Open up your mind: Think outside the box. When you are being creative use mind game exercises. For example, what is the opposite of this idea or what if it was one hundred times larger or smaller?
- Keep the momentum: If there is a silence in the brainstorming session pull out “idea starters” that you have already made in preparation for silence. These sessions need to be fast, energetic and fun to maximise the brainstorming output.
- Write all ideas down: Whether you think they’re good or bad, you can judge them later. But only judge positively, meaning, only talk about what are really strong ideas, not what are bad ones.
- Sift: Sort through the best ideas and narrow them down. Then take a break and come back to it. See if you still think the same way. Possible new ideas will crop up. Be open to anything, and accepting of everything.
- Test your best ideas: Test them with your employees, friends, even a chosen outside test group. It’s good to have confirmation that the ideas you believe are the best ones have merit to others before you put more money behind it. Then take action.
If you need additional help with your brainstorming, shoot me an email at cobyneill@hotmail.com or visit the website at www.cobyneillcreative.com.
Coby Neill is the author of three books, 200 Discoveries to Home Business Success, Be the Greatest Baseball Player of all Time and The Champion Within. He is also the owner of Coby Neill Creative, the website of which is www.cobyneillcreative.com.
